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Program Overview

Our training program is designed to offer a range of robust experiences and the development of a foundational informatics knowledge base. Learning activities and career planning will be customized and tailored to the career goals and interests of our CI fellows with the aim to provide a dynamic, mentored learning experience that equips our graduates with the tools to succeed as clinical informatics physician leaders.

Leadership & Change Management

Experiences include serving as Assistant Lead Informatics Physicians at UNC Health Information Service Division (ISD) and working embedded in a wide range of teams so that fellows obtain a breadth of experiences as well as in-depth learning in electives. Our fellows will have the opportunity to work collaboratively with our Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and practice, quality, and innovation teams as well as various IT teams across analytics, reporting, various applications, integration/interoperability and more. Our fellows will have access to quality improvement resources and training provided by our UNC Institute for Quality Improvement, which includes Lean Six Sigma training. Additionally, fellows will gain exposure to practice transformation and change management to further develop as physician leaders.

Our fellows will also complete formal coursework through online courses in clinical informatics and conduct of research and have clinical informatics-focused educational sessions including weekly fellow’s seminars.

Our fellows have access to the rich informatics resources that UNC has to offer at the University and across our health affairs schools. UNC is fortunate to have an NIH-funded clinical translational science award, which houses our NC Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NCTraCS)  (home of the UNC Clinical and Translational Science Award) that provides a number of services, including our Informatics and Data Science Core that is the home to our robust enterprise data warehouse for research (Carolina Data Warehouse for Health or CDWH). The UNC Health Sciences Library, located steps away from the UNC School of Medicine, hosts a number of resources including the first Digital Health Lending Library in the nation and specific librarians for health informatics!

The Carolina Health Informatics Program (CHIP) is the home to our master’s and doctoral informatics and data science programs and home to our NIH-funded T32 training program (predoctoral and postdoctoral). Coursework is available to our fellows.

Objectives and Goals

The UNC Clinical Informatics Fellowship will train fellows in an invigorating, supportive environment where they will carefully apply clinical informatics theory in ways that lead to measurable improvements in clinical processes and patient/family outcomes as confirmed by rigorous evaluation.

The program aims to ensure fellows:

  • Understand how to leverage information and communication technology
  • Participate in practice-based learning and improvement focused on how HIT and informatics tools can be utilized for improving safety and quality of care
  • Understand how to use IT to locate, appraise, and assimilate evidence and apply it to patient care
  • Develop competencies in leadership and communication including skills to serve as a liaison between IT professionals, administrators, and clinicians while contributing to or leading teams.
  • Adhere to the highest standards of professionalism and ethics in all that we teach and do
  • Demonstrate an awareness of responsiveness to the larger context and system
  • Gain skills in conducting and teaching scholarly activities

Upon completion of fellowship, fellows will:

  • Be board-eligible for the clinical informatics subspecialty certification exam (Preventive Medicine pathway) and will be prepared to pass the exam to become certified in the subspecialty of Clinical Informatics
  • Have completed and Individualized Learning Plan that demonstrates that they can independently practice clinical informatics
  • Have presented at conferences on clinical informatics topics
  • Have completed an informatics scholarly activity, and have submitted an abstract or manuscript
  • Have maintained their primary certification so that they may practice clinically

Educational Goals

  • Fellows will have practical experience working effectively in multidisciplinary teams to improve patient care outcomes and/or patient safety
  • Fellows will understand evidence-based medicine concepts and data analytics and use these tools when creating or updating clinical decision support tools
  • Fellows will apply workflow analysis, usability testing, and quality improvement science concepts to improve clinical informatics solutions, patient care and outcomes, and/or cost savings
  • Fellows will independently design high quality informatics tools such as clinical decision support tools
  • Fellows will effectively prioritize projects and communicate project status
  • Fellows will understand how to design and execute an informatics scholarly activity project
  • Fellows will gain experience guiding and leading implementation and use of clinical information systems

Training

As required by the ACGME, core competencies
in clinical informatics include:

  • Patient Care
  • Medical Knowledge
  • Practice-Based Learning and Improvement
  • Interpersonal and Communication Skills
  • Systems-Based Practice
  • Professionalism

National Conferences

Fellows may also attend at least one key informatics conference each year such as AMIA Annual Symposium, Epic User Group Meeting, or AMIA Clinical Informatics Conference.

Fellows participate in long-term assignments, including:

  • Scholarly Activity Projects
  • Meetings (strategic, executive leadership, operational, IT, governance,
    project management, fellows’ seminars, etc.)

Applied Informatics Projects

Examples of coursework and certifications include:

  • AMIA OHSU 10×10 Course (paid for by the program)
  • Duke Master of Management in Clinical Informatics Health IT Business Solutions
    Course (available to fellows at a reduced cost)
  • Epic Physician Builder Courses (Basic & Advanced, Analytics)
  • Training in Research Ethics (CITI Training and Responsible Conduct of
    Research Workshop)
  • UNC Institute for Quality Improvement: Physician Engagement in
    Quality and Safety Course
  • Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt Certification with the option of continuing to
    complete LEAN Blue or Purple Belt certifications
    Epic SlicerDicer Training
  • Epic Physician Power User Training
  • i2b2 @ UNC

Block Schedule

Note: All blocks are held at UNC in Chapel Hill, NC

Block 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Year 1 ICI ICI ICI ICI ACI ACI ACI SAP SAP SAP ELE ELE
Year 2 SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP SAP ELE ELE ELE
% Clinical 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20% 20%
% CI Coursework 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10% 10%

 

Key:

ICI Introduction to Clinical Informatics Rotation
ACI Advanced Clinical Informatics Rotation
SAP Scholarly Activity Project Rotation
ELE Elective

Example of Elective Choices (the same elective may be repeated up to 2 times):

  • Clinical Decision Support
  • Training and End User Support
  • Consumer Health Informatics (patient portal, virtual care,
    telehealth, remote monitoring, etc.)
  • Quality/Safety
  • Privacy and Security
  • Analytics and Predictive Modeling
  • Clinical Informatics Research
  • Population Health Informatics
  • Other (fellows may elect to design their own elective or
    rotate at external organizations such as industry partners,
    federal/government partners, start-up companies, etc.

 

Wellness

Our program and the health system is committed to fellow wellness and well-being. There are many resources and services dedicated towards wellness, well-being, and prevention of burnout, including:

Salary and Benefits

Additional information is available at the UNC Graduate Medical Education website. Salary pay scales are set by the institution annually and are not negotiable.

For salary pay scales, please note that the minimum number of required accredited years of training to be eligible for our program is 3 years. Your annual salary will be determined by the number of years required for your primary specialty’s residency training program.

2023-2024 Pay Scale

Post Graduate Level Annual Salary
I $60,052.00
II $62,194.00
III $64,445.00
IV $67,482.00
V $70,476.00
VI $73,186.00
VII $77,174.00
VIII $81,162.00